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Saturday, June 25, 2016

Based on my own anecdotal research, I think it's much worse than 1
in 25 as this 2011 TIME article suggests. My own non-scientific polling
suggests that bad managers far exceed the good ones by at least 10 to 1.
It's almost the exception to the rule to find a good, honest manager in any organization public or private. All these bad managers may not be certifiable psychopaths but I think in their quest for power at any price they learn that dishonest, unethical, immoral behavior is encouraged and rewarded whereas the opposite is not the case.

It seems the scum always rises to the
topwhen people are promoted.
Why is this? Well I think it's because promotions have less to do
with merit and more to do with popularity. In most cases, people are
promoted because those in decision making positions personally like them and the amoral compass they live by. And
people tend to like those who are just like themselves; as the old saying
goes, birds of a fetter flock together. So the vicious cycle
continues and good, honest people are consistently passed over for promotions and
relegated to irrelivant positions as worker bees where they cannot do much to affect positive change in their organization.

And in this age of thefinancialization of
America where Wall Street's demands for quarterly profits coerces business
managers into making short-term financial decisions at the expense of the
long-term viability of their company, who wants to hire a manager with long-term
goals and objectives at the expense of short term gains? Bad management at
all levels in an organization just facilitates Wall Street's demand for a profit at
any price!

Regardless of the type of organization you
work for, start paying attention to who gets promoted and who doesn't; pay attention to the behavior rather than the words of those in management positions; pay attention to the subtleties; and I think you'll confirm for yourself my suspicions that
good managers are few and far between. But read this article and judge for
yourself.

TIME

One in 25 bosses may be psychopaths — a rate that’s four times greater than in the general population — according to research by psychologist and executive coach Paul Babiak.

Babiak studied 203 American corporate professionals who had been chosen by their companies to participate in a management training program. He evaluated their psychopathic traits using a version of the standard psychopathy checklist developed by Robert Hare, an expert in psychopathy at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

Psychopaths, who are characterized by being completely amoral and concerned only with their own power and selfish pleasures, may be overrepresented in the business environment because it plays to their strengths. Where greed is considered good and profitmaking is the most important value, psychopaths can thrive.

They also tend to be charming and manipulative — and in corporate America, that easily passes for leadership. But, as the U.K.’s Guardian reported:

The survey suggests psychopaths are actually poor managerial performers but are adept at climbing the corporate ladder because they can cover up their weaknesses by subtly charming superiors and subordinates. This makes it almost impossible to distinguish between a genuinely talented team leader and a psychopath, Babiak said.

In fact, it can be hard spot the psychopath in any crowd (according to Hare, psychopaths make up 1% of the general population). They’re not all ruthless serial killers; rather, psychopaths who grow up in happy, loving homes might end up channeling their energies in a less violent way — say, by becoming a CEO. “Psychopaths really aren’t the kind of person you think they are,” Babiak said.

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

When I was in high school, I had
a close friend who fell very ill.My friend came from a broken home.His parents divorced and his younger sisters went to live with his
mother while he stayed with his father.We spent a lot of time together and had many happy memories.We became best friends.

In the early 1980s, when I
was visiting him in the hospital, I suspected then that he’d never really
recover from his illness. He moved away to live with his mother and sisters and we lost touch. We briefly reunited a year after I joined the Navy and came home on leave. We took a fun road trip together and rekindled our friendship, but we lost touch once again. Many years
later when we reconnected through the Internet, my suspicions were confirmed—he
never really recovered from his illness.

I had hoped when we
reconnected that I’d discover that he’d gotten better, fallen in love, gotten married, had children,
and built a career.But none of that ever happened.Despite his superior intellect, a college education, and handsome features, he’d never married, had children, or became
successful; instead he's now living the life of a bohemian recluse just scraping by.It was very sad for me to learn this.

But my old friend seemed to
be quite happy with his life choices and has absolutely no regrets. He's quite happy living where he does and doing what he does for a living. He's no dummy. If anything, he feels sorry for me for having the burdens of marriage and children, a mortgage, car payments, and maintaining a career. So we no longer have much in common. Our lives went in opposite directions. I went the traditional route in life, and he went the bohemian route. He’d lost his Christian faith years ago and
has become something of an agnostic.And
without that moral compass to guide him, he's developed some very unusual beliefs.

Mental illness can be a
debilitating disease that, if left untreated, can literally ruin a person’s
life, the lives of their family, and everyone who cares about them.And it can rob them of their ability to live up to their full potential in life and become
productive members of our society.In
the early 1980s when my friend was first diagnosed with a mental illness, it
was socially taboo to discuss it.Today
it’s gotten a lot better and I regularly see public service announcements on television educating the public about mental illness. Having a mental illness is not that different than having diabetes; with the proper treatment, care, and support, it can be managed so they can live more normal lives.

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About Me

Because we are all tempted to sacrifice our souls for profit, power, position, prestige, privilege, promotions, popularity, pride, prejudice, politics, prosperity, possessions, or pleasures. So by changing our paradigms, we can become the best versions of ourselves and help make our world a better place to live.

In this blog, we highlight bad practices using examples from current and past events, then we show what the better choices are. This is not to show that good always triumphs over evil, but only to show that better exists and that it's possible for people to operate in the better way. The history of business and how we grew to where we are gives us a perspective that things have been just as bad in the past and eventually got better, so there's still hope that things will cycle to the “better” yet again. We believe this blog is part of pushing the rope of improvement up the hill of progress. If you are dissatisfied with the status quo and looking for a better way to live and work, then bookmark our blog and follow us by email.

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BRYAN J. NEVA, SR. is a writer and electronics engineer from San Diego, California. He served as a Hospital Corpsman in the Navy during the Cold War and early War on Terror. He subsequently earned a BSEE and MBA degree from Old Dominion University, and then went on to work in the defense, medical device, and aerospace industries. A convert to Roman Catholicism, Bryan is a strong proponent of Catholic Social Justice and Economic teachings akin to conscientious capitalism and responsible, servant leadership. From his diverse background, he has a counterintuitive view of business management that values people over profits and the needs of the many over the wants of the few.

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ALLEN F. LAUDENSLAGER, JR. is a semi-retired writer from Seattle with a business and management background spanning over fifty years. After serving in the Army in Vietnam, he went on to work as an assembly line worker, a foreman, an electrician, a cabinetmaker, a small business owner, an electronics technician, a supervisor, a manager, a senior project manager, and a technical writer. With the knowledge and experience he has gained over a lifetime, he brings an insightful view of life, business, and management in today's global markets.